TERMINUS Vol. 21 (2019), Special Issue 1, pp. 1–29 doi:10.4467/20843844TE.19.024.11285 Radosław Grześkowiak https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6160-9982 University of Gdańsk polrg[at]univ.gda.pl Jakub Niedźwiedź https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4472-8151 Jagiellonian University in Kraków jakub.niedzwiedz[at]uj.edu.pl Unknown Polish Subscriptions to the Emblems of Otto van Veen and Herman Hugo: A Study on the Functioning of Western Religious Engravings in the Old-Polish Culture*1 Abstract The Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Musem in Cracow holds an impressive collection of old engravings, among which there are also copperplates by Cornelis Galle. He used selected prints from Amorum emblemata (1608) and Amoris divini emblemata (1615) by Otton van Veen and Pia desideria (1624) by Herman Hugo to create his own emblematic cycle on metaphysical relations between the Soul and Amor Divinus. * Publication of this paper was financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland under the grant 643/P-DUN/2018. Polish ver- sion: R. Grześkowiak, J. Niedźwiedź, “Nieznane polskie subskrypcje do emblematów religijnych Ottona van Veen i Hermana Hugona. Przyczynek do funkcjonowania zachodniej grafiki religijnej w kulturze staropolskiej”, Terminus 14 (2012), issue 25, pp. 47–68. 2 Radosław Grześkowiak, Jakub Niedźwiedź The drawings from the works of Veen and Hugo were very popular in the seventeenth century and inspired numerous poets and editors around Europe. In the Polish-Lithu- anian Commonwealth, it was Hugo’s Pia desideria that aroused particular interest. The cycle was imitated and translated by e.g. Mikołaj Mieleszko SJ, Zbigniew Morsztyn, Aleksander Teodor Lacki, and Jan Kościesza Żaba. On three of Galle’s prints stored in the Cracow museum, an anonymous author wrote epigrams, unknown until now, that accompany the images taken from the cycle by Veen (no. 8 and 21) and by Hugo (II 5). This emblematic microcycle was, with all probability, written down at the end of the seventeenth or at the beginning of the eighteenth century by a nun or a monk in one of the Lesser Polish convents or monasteries. Possibly, the origins of the cycle may be linked with the Carmelite convent in Cracow. And whether it is the actual place where the cycle was created or not, it is a good point to begin studies on the employment of emblematic practices in Catholic convents and monasteries in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Imported copperplates and woodcuts were a typical piece of the equipment of a cell. They were hung on the cell walls or were simply collected in sets of prints and often exchanged as gifts among nuns or monks, e.g. on the occasion of the New Year (an example of such a gift from 1724 is given in this paper). It was a common practice to write notes of diverse character on the reverse side of such prints, e.g. autobiographic details, short prayers or excerpts from sacred texts and religious literature. Still, the main purpose of the emblems was their application in everyday meditations and other forms of personal prayers. The three subscriptiones in the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow are also prayers of this kind, combining word and image. Keywords: Otton van Veen, Herman Hugon, Western sacred engravings, emblems, Ethnographic Museum in Cracow I In 1615, a collection by Otto van Veen (1556–1629) was published. Its title was Amoris divini emblemata. A few years earlier, van Veen, a popular painter and graphic artist with a thorough humanistic edu- cation, had published Amorum emblemata (1608), devoted to the un- ruly Cupid. It turned out, however, that these emblems could be read through more than the prism of frivolous eroticism. In a short fore- word Ad Lectorem et Spectatorem, the artist confessed that the origi- nator of the collection was Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia (1566–1633), Unknown Polish Subscriptions to the Emblems… 3 who often commissioned van Veen as a painter. The future governor of the Spanish Netherlands, but also the future nun of the order of St Clare, drew the artist’s attention to the fact that the moralistic texts focused on the pranks of Cupid published seven years earlier could easily be changed into the apology of Amor Divinus.1 Indeed, a number of illustrations in the Amoris divini emblemata unambiguously refer to the drawings from the earlier collection. The sixty emblems feature a winged girl as the Human Soul and a winged boy with wings, a halo, and a small bow, as God’s Love. Their meta- physical adventures were a counter-reformation interpretation of the mythical theme of Cupid and Psyche. Focused on love to God and a personal religious experience, the cycle appealed with extraordinary force to the collective imagination of the time, launching an avalanche of emblematic volumes devoted to this couple, whose success did not diminish until the end of the eighteenth century.2 His fame was soon overshadowed by the carefully prepared vol- ume of a Jesuit, Herman Hugo (1588–1629), published in 1624 under the title Pia desideria. Hugo arranged the emblems into three books according to the Ignatian division of spiritual development into three stages, namely purification, enlightenment, and unification. The work, popularised on the one hand by numerous reprints and refacimen- tos, and on the other by dozens of adaptations and translations into vernacular languages, enjoyed great interest in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.3 One of its translations from before 1671 was made 1 O. Vaenius, Amoris divini emblemata, Antwerp 1615, p. 4. Cf. also: S. L. Se- bastián, “La visión emblemática del amor divino según Vaenius”, Cuadernos de arte de la Fundación Universitaria Española 2 (1985), pp. 3–51; M. Thøfner, “‘Let your desire be to see God’: Teresian Mysticism and Otto van Veen’s Amoris Divini Em- blemata”, Emblematica 12 (2002), pp. 83–103; A. Buschhoff, Die Liebesemblematik des Otto van Veen. Die „Amorum Emblemata“ (1608) und die „Amoris Divini Em- blemata“ (1615), Bremen 2004, pp. 179–258. 2 See e.g. Buschhoff, Liebesemblematik, pp. 151–178, 263–267. 3 On the subject of the literary reception of Hugo’s collection in Europe and Po- land, cf.: R. Grześkowiak and J. Niedźwiedź, “Wstęp”, in M. Mieleszko, Emblematy, ed. R. Grześkowiak and J. Niedźwiedź, Warsaw 2010, pp. 21–33. 4 Radosław Grześkowiak, Jakub Niedźwiedź by the Court Marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Aleksander Teodor Lacki.4 It was published for the first time two years later, and its Cracow typographer provided some of its copies with reprints of original copperplates imported from the Netherlands. In 1744, the Minsk Voivode Jan Kościesza Żaba5 issued a new Polish version of the collection, and almost a century later, another free translation was prepared by Father Bonifacy Ostrzykowski.6 It should be added that Lacki was not the first author to become interested in the Polish language adaptation of the emblematic bestseller. As early as 1657, the court chaplain of Katarzyna Zasławska-Ostrogska (a year later Radziwiłłowa), the Jesuit Mikołaj Mieleszko, explained to his reader: And since a certain man undertook to translate into Polish the poems of the already mentioned Father Hugo, I decided to leave this task to him and to describe in Polish verse, to the best of my capabilities, only picturae and lem- mas drawn from the Holy Scriptures, as well as the message of their author.7 4 Cf.: B. Pfeiffer, “‘Pobożne pragnienia’ Aleksandra Teodora Lackiego – pierwszy polski przekład utworu emblematycznego Hermana Hugona Pia desideria”, Ze Skarbca Kultury 44 (1987), pp. 9–43; K. Mrowcewicz, “Wprowadzenie do lektury”, in A. T. Lacki, Pobożne pragnienia, ed. K. Mrowcewicz, Warsaw 1997, pp. 9–12. Con- trary to what both authors write (Pfeiffer, “‘Pobożne pragnienia’ Aleksandra Teo- dora Lackiego”, pp. 17–18; Mrowcewicz, “Wprowadzenie”, p. 8), Lacki’s translation was pressed only twice, in 1673 and 1697, and the second edition sold so poorly that after four decades, that is in 1737, it was again on the market with a new title card. The editions from 1674, 1691 and 1774 are sometimes mistakenly recorded by bib- liographers (cf. P. Buchwald-Pelcowa, “Typologia polskich książek emblematycz- n y c h”, Barok 3 (1996), no. 1, p. 71). See J. Hałoń, “W poszukiwaniu źródeł inspiracji, czyli o dwóch polskich wersjach Pia desideria Hermana Hugona”, Roczniki Humani- styczne 50 (2002), no. 1, pp. 127–159; J. Hałoń, “Wobec obrazu”, Zeszyty Naukowe KUL 46 (2003), no. 1–2, pp. 33–61; a preliminary analysis of the style of Lacki’s translation: F. Dietz, E. Stronks, and K. Zawadzka, “Roomskatholieke Pia desideria – bewerkingen in internationaal perspectief”, Internationale Neerlandistiek 47 (2009), no. 3, pp. 31–49. 5 Żaba’s translation had two editions, an anonymous one published in Supraśl in 1744 and a signed one issued a decade later in Vilnius (cf. M. Cubrzyńska- Leonarczyk, Katalog druków supraskich, Warsaw 1995, p. 67: no. 134; Buchwald- Pelcowa, “Typologia”, p. 71). 6 H. Hugo, Pobożne pragnienia, transl. B. Ostrzykowski, Warsaw 1843. 7 Mieleszko, Emblematy, pp. 76–77. Unknown Polish Subscriptions to the Emblems… 5 The translation Mieleszko mentioned is unknown today. Luckily, however, his work, Nabożne westchnienia [Pious Sighs], which, ac- cording to Mieleszko’s declaration, contains authorial subscriptiones written to Hugo’s picturae and lemmas, survived in two editions. To complete this short review of old-Polish adaptations of emblematic collections, we should mention the emblematic cycle of Zbigniew Morsztyn, also commissioned by Katarzyna Radziwiłłowa. The ec- lectic volume of the anonymous Capuchin Les emblèmes d’amour divin et humain ensemble, which became the basis for one hundred and thirteen lyrical subscriptiones, was also largely inspired by the emblems in Pia desideria.8 Against the background of the old-Polish popularity of Hugo’s collection, the lack of interest in the pious volume of Vaenius, which was Hugo’s most important inspiration, is striking.